On the last night of the year, Nick spent the evening at my place. I had organized a Brazilian-style New Year’s Eve supper. I had provided a bottle of wine (one of the four I buy over the course of a year), but Nick showed up carrying a box with twelve bottles of beer.
“Beer—lots of beer. That’s the American tradition!”
Well, before midnight, Nick was already snoring on the living-room couch, and the bottle of wine remained unopened.
It was only last Saturday that he seemed to pay any real attention to the supper I had prepared.
“So,” he said, “we eat pork because it brings good luck, right?”
“Progress is the better word,” I replied. “Pigs always move forward. Walking backward is a symbol of regression. That’s why chicken or turkey is avoided—they scratch backward. Crabs, too, since they walk sideways or back. But pork and fish are eaten because they always move ahead.”
“So what other traditions do you guys have in Brazil?” he asked.
“Eating twelve pomegranate seeds and keeping them in your wallet is said to attract money. The same goes for grapes, and for eating lentils at midnight.”
“Oh! So that’s why you served lentils with the pork!”
“Exactly. Tradition demands that one choose very carefully what to eat on New Year’s Eve. But there are also things to do in the first minutes of the new year: some people climb twelve steps of a staircase, starting on the first step, always leading with the right foot—the left one brings bad luck. And those who live near the coast usually bathe in the sea, because it’s said that salt cleanses us of bad energies. Jumping over three waves is also very common, as a symbol of overcoming the challenges of the year to come. And that’s not all! There are rules about what to eat, what to do, and even what to wear.”
“What do you mean?” Nick asked.
I laughed and explained:
“The colors you wear are supposed to attract certain things. White for peace and happiness; red for passion; pink for love; yellow for money; green for health. Of course, this is easier for women—they just put on a long dress and they’re wrapped in a single color. For us men, it’s more complicated: pants and shirt have to match. If dressing entirely in one color isn’t possible, a man should at least wear underwear in the desired color.”
“Underwear?” Nick said, laughing.
“Yes!” I replied, laughing heartily myself. “Some people say that the way you end the year is the way you’ll continue it in the new one. So it’s important to have a clean house, clean clothes, and so on. And we mustn’t forget to turn on all the lights in the house, to welcome the new year!”
“Wow. That’s a lot of stuff.”
“Yes,” I said, still laughing. “All of that, just so that in the end we can do one simple thing: change the calendar.”
“And do you actually follow all that?”
“No. There’s an important distinction to be made. One thing is that I love folklore. I enjoy noting down traditions from different places and studying them. Another thing is that these practices are superstitions—popular beliefs with elements of magic. Thinking that I can control events by doing this or that is incompatible with my faith. I served you a traditional Brazilian New Year’s supper as a way of reconnecting with my homeland, and also simply because I love fruit, lentils, and pork. The traditions of my land merely give me an extra excuse to delight in these things.”
“And I basically just drank beer and passed out on your couch.”
“…and you snore terribly!”
“Oh, come on—shut up!”
